terry jennings "piece for cello and saxophone"
"Piece for Cello and Saxophone"...
...is a foundational minimalist composition written in 1960 by the American avant-garde composer Terry Jennings. Despite its literal title, the most prominent modern recordings and performances of the work contain no saxophone at all, consisting entirely of a massive, extended solo cello performance.
Composer Terry Jennings (1940–1981) was "a lost minimalist" and close associate of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Dennis Johnson. His early death and chaotic life resulted in most of his work being lost.
The musical style features a glacial, hypnotic chorale of sustained tones and dense microtonal harmonies heavily influenced by modalism, late-romantic classical music, and jazz. Critics and historians consider the piece a monumental development in early American minimalism, standing alongside Terry Riley’s "In C" and La Monte Young’s "The Well-Tuned Piano."
The piece survived and gained widespread recognition largely due to a radical intonation realization developed by legendary minimalist pioneer La Monte Young and master cellist Charles Curtis.
The entire composition is a continuous, hypnotic drone work tracking at just over 80 minutes. It was arranged in "just intonation" (a precise system of tuning based on whole-number frequency ratios) by the legendary minimalist pioneer La Monte Young.
Originally intended for cello and saxophone, historical performances rarely utilized that exact pairing. Earlier configurations featured Curtis on cello with La Monte Young singing the saxophone line, while another planned version swapped the saxophone for a double bass.
The definitive arrangement strips the piece down to a single cello playing against a pre-recorded bed of cello drones. Charles Curtis maps microscopic tonal shifts that stretch individual notes to their absolute physical and emotional limits.
In 2022, the avant-garde label Saltern issued the first proper commercial recording of the piece on a double vinyl LP.
▼▼ DEEPER DIG ▼▼
शान्ति εἰρηνικός سلام 和平 ☮︎ शांति 평화 ſíot͡ʃáin ሰላም pax